Does anyone know if it is possible to read from a Datastore on the app engine to a native app?
I am working my way through making a simple notes app that I can store online and use on my phone and tablet. I would prefer the phone interface be more than just a WebView instance or only used from the browser. I would also like a tablet optimized version as well.
I am comfortable programming android, and I am comfortable with web apps as well, so this is the last important piece before I can start putting it all together.
Has anyone done this before? Or, if it isn't possible, can someone send a link so I can further explore and find out what?
Thanks!
You can interface directly with the datastore using remote_api, but this is designed as an administrative interface, and shouldn't be used for access by end-users. The standard approach for what you're doing - on any webapp, regardless of platform - is to define an API that your application exposes for access to the data, and consume that API from your native app. If you're using Python, you may want to check out ProtoRPC (now included in the SDK) as an easy way to define APIs.
Related
I have previously used
#app.route('/mypage/<int:myvariable>/')
to create rules for what should happen when users land on different urls on my website. I have done this on local machines that have been running on my own virtual servers.
Now I am learning to publish my first web app to Google App Engine. I have heard that I should be using Google Cloud Endpoints instead of the route decorator.
#endpoints...
I've read a few articles about endpoints and some of the benefits of endpoints that they list are:
Endpoints makes it easier to create a web backend for web clients and mobile clients
Endpoints free you from having to write wrappers to handle communication with App Engine
Even if I have read this I can't wrap my head around what this means. I don't understand it. Can you explain in non-technical terms with examples what the advantages of using #endpoints is compared to alternatives? The alternative that I am familiar with is #app.route.
Google Cloud Endpoints can be thought of as a subset of #app.route. They are intended to solve the API backend problem for mobile and javascript clients. They are not intended to serve web pages and other hypermedia. You can use the normal routing methods of your framework of choice to create a web service for your application but Google Cloud Endpoints takes care of a lot of boilerplate for you.
There are a lot of limitations with Google Cloud Endpointsso be sure to familiarize yourself with them before committing. For one, you cannot host Google Cloud Endpoints on a custom domain name. They are only accessible via <app_id>.appspot.com/_ah/api/*
Endpoints makes it easier to create a web backend for web clients and
mobile clients
What this means is that you can create one backend and then iOS, Android and Web-apps (via Javascript for example), can execute your API methods with specific client generated libraries.
This is convenient if you are building a backend that you want to be easily accessed via smartphones or through a web browser.
Endpoints free you from having to write wrappers to handle
communication with App Engine
With Endpoints you can generate client libraries (e.g. Android, iOS, Javascript) that you can then execute your API methods. You don't have to worry about writing a bunch of additional code to do that.
My Opinion:
I have never used Cloud Endpoints to make a web-app but it is very convenient if you are making a mobile app for iOS and Android because you can access your backend with both platforms.
One reason you might want to use Cloud Endpoints for a web-app instead of something else is because of Datastore. Datastore is the way Cloud Endpoints stores data. It is a NoSQL storage method which is kinda tricky to wrap your head around at first if you come from a relational database background, but once you get it, it makes a lot of sense.
to all
as we all know, Appscript tipicaly for Google Spreadsheet now have a UI builder, though you can compose UI with the script itself the builder is a big factor. now
GAS application is hosted in google drive and can be either share or publish as Webapp. which is great but this type of app is very limited to storing your data in a spreadsheet well, designing a good DB spreadsheet would be enough for small application but is NOT scalable for SME to Enterprise apps.
now having google app engine which have a very good and scalable platform for a webapp.
is there anyway to port the UI library capability and use it for app engine application. having GAS UI as a javascript base (client side) it could be integrated with any serverside language in GAE.
do any one have any example on this or is it now posible?
the way I see it this might be the future for GAE having a GAS as a client side library would be great?
Well, I think you should be looking the other way round. All of Apps Script's UI widgets are borrowed from GWT in GAE. In fact, the Apps Script documentation, at places suggests that we should lookup GWT documentation when this is found inadequate.
Coming to the point of the UI bilder, I'm no GAE expert, but since you get a GWT toolkit for Eclipse, you should be able to use any of Eclipse's UI creating tools ( I may be wrong here).
GWT is compiled to javascript. It doesn't care what the backend is. You can use json to communicate to your python AE instance just fine I would think. I do GWT on java AE so don't have an example of my own but here is an example of using python on AE to use App Scripts https://developers.google.com/apps-script/articles/appengine
Can I use GAE(Google App Engine) for developing a server for mobile clients? Mobile clients will send data to server every 10 seconds.
I am planning to develop the prototype using GAE and then depending on the results, will decide where to locate the prod server.
And are there any best practices to follow in developing code so that it will have very minimal dependancy with GAE (Can easily port to another environment with minimal code change when required)
thanks.
Ofcourse you can, GAE provides a good way to create a great backend for a mobile app.
about dependencies, you can use a project like django-nonrel, it creates an interface between your code and the API of GAE.
I am trying to create a chrome extension which will interact with some of the google products like calender, maps etc using their respective APIs.
Presently I am trying to create a Java backend which will be run on google app engine.
My chrome extension will send request to java classes in Google app engine and excnage data streams.
Is it a good idea to go ahead with this approach ? or could you please suggest me some other model.
Thanks,
Mayank
Sounds good to me. If those APIs don't provide javascript (or REST) access then there is no other way than to write a proxy in one of the supported languages.
Yes, this is a perfectly reasonable approach. Did you have specific questions about how to accomplish it?
I would like to create a web IM chat system using Google App Engine using XMPP possibly.
It would allow users of a social network to talk with each other.
Is this possible using GAE?
I haven't used GAE before. Does anybody know of any good examples/code which I could look into to get started?
If all your communication is between users who are interacting with your site directly, there's no need to use XMPP, or benefit from it - just write your IM system into the site directly. XMPP support is designed for interaction with external IM services.
Alternately, you could embed the Google Talk gadget in your site, but that will require users to sign in to their Google accounts to use it.
It's certainly possible. I would start with reading http://code.google.com/appengine/articles/using_xmpp.html in order to get started.